Punctuated Equilibrium and School Reform

Education policy discourse is saturated with a wide spectrum of reforms, many positing to be panaceas for the ills of today's schools.  "Experts" both from inside and outside the sphere of education propose the next best thing for schools on a near daily basis.  Often new ideas are not vetted and are not research based,  yet they somehow find their way into schools and classrooms.  Despite the plethora of reforms sprouting up daily, there seems to be a dearth of any "true" reforms.  Analyzing the education policy arena through the lens of the Punctuated-equilibrium framework proposed by True, Jones, and Baumgartner (2007), one can understand the process of the education policy process.  Generally speaking the political arena tends to remain in stasis and incrementalism, but every so often there is a punctuation that represents some significant change (True, Jones, Baumgartner, 2007).  Though the education system is relatively immune to change, one would expect some sort of large scale change or policy leap at some point, but anything significant seems to be absent from education policy event history.  This is certainly an arguable point and many "reformers" would no doubt propose a list of reforms such as charter schools to counter my claim.  I view most if not all education policy reforms of the last several decades to be incremental in nature, offering nothing close to true punctuation.  Why there hasn't been a significant change is unclear.  It could be due to the nature of educational institutions or the opposition of certain groups to particular proposals.  There is no doubt that policy entrepreneurs have tried to advocate for certain agendas, but with minimal success.  I believe that major change is possible, but that it has not happened yet.  The education system in the United States is disturbingly similar to what existed over half a century ago.  The grammar of schooling remains resistant to change, but I am hopeful that the education system in the United States will exit its protracted period of stasis soon.